.. by ruling, for third time, that we can't snatch people and throw them in a hole, then forget about them forever. Justice Kennedy summarized by stating, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times..." dismissing Constitutionally the idea that just because we are supposedly "at war" the basic protections inherent in the Constitution can't be cast aside.

Dependable Antonin Scalia summarized the argument that the neocons have been making for years in his dissent, stating that the inconvenience of adhering to the law "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Frankly, I agree with Scalia on this point, but it's also fundamentally irrelevant. Kennedy points out correctly that we are a nation of laws, and that that has to take precedence over irrational fear.

Dependable Antonin Scalia summarized the argument that the neocons have been making for years in his dissent, stating that the inconvenience of adhering to the law "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

The same could be said for nearly any respect paid to any right, or nearly any decision to refrain from any violent plan.

Dependable Antonin Scalia summarized the argument that the neocons have been making for years in his dissent, stating that the inconvenience of adhering to the law "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

The same could be said for nearly any respect paid to any right, or nearly any decision to refrain from any violent plan.

If you read the majority decision you can really tell that they were trying to tell Bush and Co off. They start with the history of Habeus Corpus and go on and on about how "even the Magna Carta" realized the importance of such a principle. Then they go into British Kings and say how even they were not "above the law". Directly infering that Bush has tried to make himself above the law by rewritting the law to make it so. I really enjoyed reading the decision.

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" And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason." Isaac Asimov

Oh I realize that. But it reminded me that the decision is pending any day. I'd let it slip under my radar screen.

Out of curiosity MSD do you think this was a good or a bad decision? As a staunch supporter of the Constitution, including the 2nd amendment and HABEUS CORPUS, I thought it was a great decision.

When McCain came out stating how terrible the decision was my first reaction was that McCain probably didn't even read it, because if he had he would realize that the Supreme Court just upheld one of the main fundamental "self evident" freedoms that the constitution guarantees. But then I realized that McCain really doesn't give a damn about the constitution and is instead pandering to what his base wants to hear.

« Last Edit: June 16, 2008, 05:05:40 PM by Scraper »

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" And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason." Isaac Asimov

I can understand and sympathize with the arguments for both sides. The thing that gets me is that McCain called this one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history. Really? Even if one thinks the court made a mistake, does anyone really think this is on the level of, say, the Dred Scott decision?

But ten I realized that McCain really doesn't give a damn about the constitution and is instead pandering to what his base wants to hear.

Yes, that makes complete sense. John McCain doesn't give a damn about the constitution at all. Rather, he wants to change it into some neocon fascist manifesto. And his base also doesn't give a damn about the constitution either! Forget that Americans consider the constitution to be nearly as holy as the bible, they just want to hear that it's going to get changed so that they can continue to watch Fox News and bitchslap gays around.

Yes, that makes complete sense. John McCain doesn't give a damn about the constitution at all. Rather, he wants to change it into some neocon fascist manifesto. And his base also doesn't give a damn about the constitution either! Forget that Americans consider the constitution to be nearly as holy as the bible, they just want to hear that it's going to get changed so that they can continue to watch Fox News and bitchslap gays around.

If you actually read and understand the decision then nothing you just said makes any sense. The SC did not change the constitution with their ruling. They upheld the principle of Habeus Corpus and said that the President and Congress cannot just suspend the constitution when it becomes convenient for them to do so.

I quote "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeus corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law....The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of , and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply."

As far as my comment about McCain's base. What I was implying is that many Republican's think we should be "tough" on terrorists and that the constitution should not get in the way of that goal.

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" And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason." Isaac Asimov

Eight years after a national debate over gun control helped keep Democrat Al Gore out of the White House, the National Rifle Assn. and its Republican allies are launching a new campaign to defeat Barack Obama.

But this time, the issue that GOP strategists once relied on to provide crucial votes in close elections has lost much of its political punch.

The NRA may have become a victim of its own success.

Congress hasn't passed major legislation to restrict gun use in 14 years. Democrats -- scarred by past NRA campaigns -- almost never talk about the issue anymore.

And Americans now show little interest in gun control. Just half want tougher rules for gun sales, compared with nearly two-thirds in 2000.

"The issue has been essentially removed from the political agenda," said Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at the State University of New York in Cortland who has written extensively about the politics of gun control.

If you actually read and understand the decision then nothing you just said makes any sense. The SC did not change the constitution with their ruling. They upheld the principle of Habeus Corpus and said that the President and Congress cannot just suspend the constitution when it becomes convenient for them to do so.

I read and understand the decision. Considering the Supreme Court interprets the constitution and does not change it, I understand that no amendment was sneaked in or anything . That has nothing to do with my previous post. My previous post was a sarcastic attempt to show how ridiculous it is for you to think that John McCain, the guy who was brutally tortured at the Hanoi Hilton for several years, who has served in DC since the early 80's, doesn't give a damn for the document on which the country is founded.

Disagree with him, by all means. But to make such ridiculous claims is just drama.

McCain has been in favor of these anti-constitution programs. It's one of the biggest reasons people out in the SW here are putting the states into play come election time, when they should be heavy favorites for him...

What really strikes me right off the bat is that when going through the history of this issue, it basically reads:

Courts decided that what was being done was illegal.Congress specifically made it legal.Courts decided that what was being done was still illegal.Congress made it legal again, and decided to make it illegal for the courts to review.Courts decided that what was being done was STILL illegal,and tells the Rs and their OMFG911 complicit Dem scardycats to STFU because it's a Constitutional issue and oversight can't be legislated away.

I mean, Congress was going through a tortuous (pardon the pun) sequence of legislation and justification all specifically designed not only to prevent random people scooped up under dubious circumstances (not all, admittedly, but some) from ever even getting fair treatment, but specifically designed to circumvent any review of their treatment at all.

It's seriously disgusting and shameful, and I'm proud of the court for understanding that the basic concepts of our rights are more important than the terrorist nonsense.

New McClatchy article on the "war council" of lunatics who greenlit Guantanamo and the torturing of prisoners. Includes everyone's favorite asshole, John Yoo.

Money quote: "The quintet did more than condone harsh treatment, however. It created an environment in which it was nearly impossible to prosecute soldiers or officials for alleged crimes committed in U.S. detention facilities."

There's a new report on the methods our torturers used, authored by Physicians for Human Rights. Maj. Gen Antonio Taguba, who investigated Abu Ghraib in 2004, in the preface, writes:

Quote

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

From the report, here's the story of Amir, one of the innocent Iraqis, released after 17 months in custody:

Quote

During the course of detention, Amir recalled experiencing several other abuses. On one occasion, Amir was playing with a broken toothbrush while sitting in front of his cell. When the soldiers saw this, they confiscated the broken tooth brush and accused him of manufacturing a dangerous weapon. They told him to take off his clothes. Amir recalled that he pleaded that his religion forbids nakedness. He was nevertheless restrained naked to the bars of his cell’s door for two to three hours. He was then returned to his cell naked and without a blanket. He noted that the soldiers would come to his cell and humiliate him because of his nakedness.

Amir recounted remaining naked and being forced to pray in that condition. During that time, he recalled that a soldier came to his cell and started shouting. Amir was praying, so he did not answer. The soldier entered the cell, and pushed Amir’s head to the floor. He was then suspended with his arms up and behind his back for several hours, with only his toes touching the ground. During this time, Amir also heard increasingly high-pitched screaming from, in his words, "others who were tortured. The screaming was getting higher and higher."

Subsequently, Amir was taken to a small foul-smelling room and was forced to lay face down in urine and feces. He noted, "You can’t even breathe because of that smell... [The soldier] pushed me to lie down. I tried to move my shoulder so my face would not go to the ground. They brought a loudspeaker and started shouting in my ear. I thought my head would explode." Amir reported that a broomstick was forcibly inserted into his anus. He was hit and kicked on his back and on his side. At this point, he was bleeding from his feet and shoulders, and the urine exacerbated the pain from these wounds. He was pulled by a leather dog leash and was ordered to "howl like dogs do." When he refused to do so he was repeatedly kicked. Amir felt a hot liquid on his back and guessed that someone was urinating on him. He received more kicks on his left side and in the groin, and one of the men stepped on his genitals, causing him to faint.

Amir subsequently woke up to cold water being poured on his head. He recalled hurting all over his body, particularly on the left lateral side of his chest, his right middle finger, and his groin and genitals. He noticed that his genitals were swollen and had wounds.

When asked about his internal responses to this episode of abuse, Amir described, "My soul was flying away. Like my body was not there. I started to think about my family ...When I woke up [from the beating], I felt like I was not of this life. But my body was there, the pains in my body were there."

Following this episode, Amir was kept naked in his cell for about four days. During that period, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited him and he told them about his mistreatment. The ICRC personnel provided him with clothing and blankets, which were confiscated after they left. When the Red Cross returned the following day, these provisions were given back to him – only to be taken away again when the visitors left. ...

When asked "Did any doctor help you with your injuries?," Amir uncharacteristically interrupted the interviewer and cried out, "Did I need to ask for help? I was there naked and bleeding. They were supposed to help...These were not real doctors. They had no compassion. They were not there to practice medicine but to make war."

Second best line was by the Prez: "We did something outside of the bounds of the Constitution."

and that's one reason qwhy there are some who believe he should be impeached - the oath is to uphold and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, not to try to weasel your way around it

New McClatchy article on the "war council" of lunatics who greenlit Guantanamo and the torturing of prisoners. Includes everyone's favorite asshole, John Yoo.

Money quote: "The quintet did more than condone harsh treatment, however. It created an environment in which it was nearly impossible to prosecute soldiers or officials for alleged crimes committed in U.S. detention facilities."

He turns out to have lots of unexpected quirks. He’s pro-choice. He thinks flag burning is a legitimate form of free speech. He thinks the government is “wasting a lot of resources” in the war on drugs. He thinks the phrase “war on terror” is misleading political rhetoric. He’s cowriting an article that makes a conservative case for gay marriage. “Our argument is, the state should just stay out of these things, because it doesn’t hurt anybody.” And he’s definitely alarmed by the more theocratic Republicans. “When Mike Huckabee says he wants to amend the Constitution so that it’s consistent with God’s law, that scares the bejesus out of me.”

Yeah, I've read that article, and certainly his position is a little more nuanced than has been made clear in the popular press. But while Yoo isn't an across-the-board conservative idealogue, the fact remains that he justified (and continues to justify) these theories of the "unitary executive" that have led us to torture people who've been kidnapped and incarcerated without any recourse to prove their innocence. There are no circumstances under which it is legally or morally permissible to hurt people until just before the point of pain "equivalent to" organ failure or death.

The Bush administration wants to rewrite the official evidence against Guantanamo Bay detainees, allowing it to shore up its cases before they come under scrutiny by civilian judges for the first time.

The government has stood behind the evidence for years. Military review boards relied on it to justify holding hundreds of prisoners indefinitely without charge. Justice Department attorneys said it was thoroughly and fairly reviewed. Now that federal judges are about to review the evidence, however, the government says it needs to make changes.

At a closed-door meeting with judges and defense attorneys this week, government lawyers said they needed time to add new evidence and make other changes to evidentiary documents known as "factual returns."

To bolster his argument that the Guantanomo detainees should be denied the right to prove their innocence in federal courts, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush: "At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guant?mo have returned to the battlefield." It turns out that statement is false.

According to a new report by Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research, "The statistic was endorsed by a Senate Minority Report issued June 26, 2007, which cites a media outlet, CNN. CNN, in turn, named the DoD as its source. The '30' number, however, was corrected in a DoD press release issued in July 2007, and a DoD document submitted to the House Foreign Relations Committee on May 20, 2008 abandons the claim entirely."

The largest possible number of detainees who could have "returned to the fight" is 12; however, the Department of Defense has no system for tracking the whereabouts of released detainees. The only one who has undisputedly taken up arms against the United States or its allies, "ISN 220," was released by political officers of the DoD against the recommendations of military officers. Scalia bolstered his hysterical claim that the Boumediene decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed" with stale information that was proven to be false one year ago. Professor Mark Denbeaux, director of the Seton Hall Center, said, Scalia "was relying uncritically on information that originated with a party in the case before him."]

The Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 decision that the Guant?mo detainees were entitled to file petitions for writ of habeas corpus to challenge their detention. More than 200 men who have been held for up to six years and have never been charged with a crime, will now have their day in court. Many were snatched from their homes, picked up off the street or in airports, or sold to the U.S. military by warlords for bounty."

I bolded the part that I think is most interesting. I consider it absolutly untenable for a supreme court justice to quote incorrect information, provided by the defendant, regardless of what one feels the decision should have been.